Hoax Bomb Threats Disrupt at Least 34 Flights in Europe
Travellers across Europe have faced a run of hoax bomb threats this week. At least 34 flights were disrupted, and some had to make emergency landings.
A day of threats
On Thursday alone, at least 25 threats affected flights between Italy, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, France, Greece, Serbia and Czechia. Ten airlines were involved, among them Ryanair, Aer Lingus, Wizz Air, Finnair, easyJet and LOT Polish Airlines. All the planes landed safely, and searches found nothing suspicious.
Heathrow and Birmingham airports received threats overnight. Specialist investigators from the Metropolitan police's aviation police command helped establish that they were hoaxes. The Met said four aircraft departing from or arriving at Heathrow were targeted and that no security issues were identified.
Earlier in the week, seven planes were searched or diverted on Tuesday. On Monday, a UK-Bulgaria flight changed course following a threat that looked baseless.
Odd details from individual flights
Cork airport took an anonymous phone call on Thursday morning, and a flight was delayed. A separate Ryanair flight from Pescara to Brussels-Charleroi was inspected after someone scrawled the word "bomb" on the wall of its toilet.
An Aer Lingus pilot flying from Dublin to Rome diverted to Évreux. French authorities are questioning him, according to French media, because he first refused to land at a military base.
Who is behind it?
Emails sent to airports in Rome and Sofia were signed "fighters of the Male State", according to sources at Aeroporti di Roma and a text seen by Agence France-Presse. Male State is a Russian movement, founded in 2016 by Vladislav Pozdnyakov, that is far-right, ultranationalist and misogynistic. He did not comment on or claim the threats on his Telegram channel.
Investigators said on Thursday that there was still no evidence a hostile terror group or a state such as Russia or Iran was orchestrating the hoaxes. Inquiries continue across Europe. A Kremlin spokesperson called it absurd to blame Vladimir Putin's administration for cyber-attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems earlier in the week.
Italy's defence minister, Guido Crosetto, listed the fridge hacks, problems with blood supplies in France and the fake alarms. He said someone has an interest in stoking tensions. Such activity is called under-threshold warfare, he said, because it falls below the attribution threshold.
A tiny fraction, but a costly one
Eurocontrol said 27,400 flights were scheduled in Europe on Thursday, so the affected flights were a tiny fraction. Still, diversions are expensive and disruptive, and airlines have little choice when a threat looks even remotely credible.
Iata, the global airlines body, condemned the disruption and asked authorities to trace the threats. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said it was premature to say if the incidents were connected.
Rhys Jones, an analyst at Osprey Flight Solutions, said the threats seemed linked but looked like "a reasonably chaotic campaign". He added that the hoaxers might well judge mere disruption a win. One result he expects is heavier security, more media coverage and public concern about travelling.
Source: The Guardian